Recently, a number of my poems have appeared or are forthcoming in highly respected literary magazines, including Twyckenham Notes, the I-70 Review, the Broadkill Review, and the White Hall Review.

My poem Pale Pink Taxi Garage, Croton, went live today on the website of White Walll Review. The poems in Twyckenham Notes, Lansing and Sitting on a Guardrail in the Shadows of Early Morning are published on their website and include audio renditions. My poem The Road from Millerton appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of the Broadkill Review. The work In the Tire Shop is scheduled to appear in a print issue of I-70 Review.

Meanwhile, my short story Gran Fury is set to appear in October in the online magazine Juked.

The story behind Gran Fury is interesting. The title, as some may have guessed, is taken from the Plymouth model manufactured in the 70s and 80s. To me the name was always evocative, and I took to noticing how beat the surviving cars seemed to be—a kind of irony on wheels. The vehicle first came to star in a poem of mine by the same name. Years later, I had the idea of how the poem itself could be repurposed in prose as the opening of a short story. The rest of the piece practically wrote itself. Since then, I’ve used at least two other poems as the basis for short stories. It’s nice when your work keeps on giving.

Tire Shop and Sitting on a Guardrail were both inspired by the same subject: a Hispanic man I observed, yes, sitting on a guardrail, waiting for the tire shop he worked in to open. He and his situation (as I imagined it) held my attention for months, as I passed him daily around ten-to-eight in the morning. He was always sitting idly holding a brown lunch bag. I had been in that tire shop and had also observed workers returning home after their shifts, their clothes almost completely blackened. I knew how hard the work was and how cold the drafty garage was in winter. I imagined that he might have been from a Central American country, come to the states to work and send money home to his family. So, fairly or not, I fictionalized a character based on him. I know there are some who would criticize me for making assumptions. But this is what writers do. They observe life and make up stories based on those observations.

I’ve also recently had poems published in Waymark, a magazine published by noted poet Roger Aplon that I and my longtime poet friends Joel Scherzer and his wife, the late Robbie Rubinstein have appeared in often over the years. The magazine publishes many of the poets who are members of CAPS, a literary organization that sponsors regular readings in New York’s Hudson Valley. At the same time, Waymark has included a number of writers who are part of the Pueblo Poetry Project, in Pueblo, Colorado. In addition to Joel and Robbie, the magazine has featured the work of PPP writers Tony Moffeit and Kyle Laws. I’ve had the pleasure of participating in PPP readings several times over the organization’s 30-year history.

Recently, a number of my poems have appeared or are forthcoming in highly respected literary magazines, including Twyckenham Notes, the I-70 Review, the Broadkill Review, and the White Wall Review.

My poem Pale Pink Taxi Garage, Croton, went live today on the website of White Wall Review. The poems in Twyckenham Notes, Lansing and Sitting on a Guardrail in the Shadows of Early Morning are published on their website and include audio renditions. My poem The Road from Millerton appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of the Broadkill Review. The work In the Tire Shop is scheduled to appear in a print issue of I-70 Review.

Meanwhile, my short story Gran Fury is set to appear in October in the online magazine Juked.

The story behind Gran Fury is interesting. The title, as some may have guessed, is taken from the Plymouth model manufactured in the 70s and 80s. To me the name was always evocative, and I took to noticing how beat the surviving cars seemed to be—a kind of irony on wheels. The vehicle first came to star in a poem of mine by the same name. Years later, I had the idea of how the poem itself could be repurposed in prose as the opening of a short story. The rest of the piece practically wrote itself. Since then, I’ve used at least two other poems as the basis for short stories. It’s nice when your work keeps on giving.

Tire Shop and Sitting on a Guardrail were both inspired by the same subject: an Hispanic man I observed, yes, sitting on a guardrail, waiting for the tire shop he worked in to open. He and his situation (as I imagined it) held my attention for months, as I passed him daily around ten-to-eight in the morning. He was always sitting idly holding a brown lunch bag. I had been in that tire shop and had also observed workers returning home after their shifts, their cloths almost completely blackened. I knew how hard the work was and how cold the drafty garage was in winter. I imagined that he might have been from a Central American country, come to the states to work and send money home to his family. So, fairly or not, I fictionalized a character based on him. I know there are some who would criticize me for making assumptions. But this is what writers do. They observe life and make up stories based on those observations.

I’ve also recently had poems published in Waymark, a magazine published by noted poet Roger Aplon that I and my longtime poet friends Joel Scherzer and his wife, the late Robbie Rubinstein have appeared in often over the years. The magazine publishes many of the poets who are members of CAPS, a literary organization that sponsors regular readings in New York’s Hudson Valley. At the same time, Waymark has included a number of writers who are part of the Pueblo Poetry Project, in Pueblo, Colorado. In addition to Joel and Robbie, the magazine has featured the work of PPP writers Tony Moffeit and Kyle Laws. I’ve had the pleasure of participating in PPP readings several times over the organization’s 30-year history.

I just launched my new TV pilot, “Raceless.”

Here’s a brief synopsis:

Jimbo Dempsey was “too” white. In the year 2265, that was not good. In fact, it was much worse. If your DNA was more than 65 percent white or black — you’d be exterminated. Two centuries earlier a totalitarian government — the Administration — had come into power, predicated on establishing a “raceless society,” one that would “eliminate conflict among humankind — no matter the cost.”

In “Raceless,” resisters become fugitives living on a new Underground Railroad.

If you’d like to read the script, click the title: “Raceless.”

A decade ago, on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing (July 20, 1969), I wrote the following:

How strange it is that the venerable Walter Cronkite, who defined that very moment, should pass right now (he died July 17, 2009). It’s as if he and Neil Armstrong will somehow launch into eternity together, in a fitting orbit.

I was in a second-rate hotel in Eureka, California the day the Apollo 11 crew landed. I was with my own merry band of pranksters (my first wife, Carol, my sister, Alice, and friends) on a cross country trip in my 1948 Cadillac hearse. As we descended into the hotel lobby, Cronkite’s voice crackled from a TV, saying something like, “What a great county…I just don’t understand these hippies…” The TV was a table model that sat on a broken Sylvania console. Behind these proceedings, in a large picture window, a broken Native American shuffled along the street in the hot California sun. What an ironic scene. Could have been out of an Antonioni film.

To be fair, Cronkite, who had already helped turn the tide against the Vietnam War with his groundbreaking television coverage, eventually came to look upon the the so-called hippie movement more kindly.

Emerge Gallery’s “Art & Words” Exhibit — a combination of art and poetry inspired by one another — opened last night in Saugerties, NY. My poem “Ghost Plaza,” inspired by artist Ellen Martin’s photograph “Abandoned #98 Plywood and Pleats,” appears in the exhibit. Both are shown below.

GHOST PLAZA

By Allen Shadow

Blanked and shadowed
once curtained and live
the cratered parking lot
the power lines to nowhere
the mismatched plywood for eyes
yet can see, smell the luxe drapes
dripping sad theater where once
little ladies with purses sat for hours
beneath bulbous dryers, unaware
of the traffic and teen terrors beyond

Are there still stray coins perhaps
amid the slaughtered floor tiles
ones that might tell tales of transactions
good and bad and heated, when there
was once the throbbing of life?

The show will culminate in a poetry reading on Sunday, April 28, from 2 to 5 p.m. Emerge Gallery is located at 228 Main Street, Saugerties. The show is curated by poet, artist and gallery owner Robert Langdon.

I was selected as a finalist in the 20th Great American Song Contest, for my song “Is It Love Yet?”. I recorded the song in Nashville in the late Eighties. Trisha Yearwood sang the demo; it was signed to PolyGram (later bought by Universal). It was later released as a single by indie artist JoAnne Redding.

You can listen to Trisha singing “Is It Love Yet?” here:

I haven’t written much about my Nashville years on this blog, so thought I’d mention that I also had songs published to other major companies, including SONY, Tom Collins Music, Shedd House and Tillis Tunes.

The 20th Great American Song Contest received more than 2,000 submissions from 44 countries.